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I learned recently that a large tax refund, high-speed internet access and copious amounts of alcohol, may not be the best of combinations. I awoke the next morning after combining the three to find that in addtion to a few other items, I had ordered not one, but three finecast miniatures from Games Workshop. Fortunately, the models fit into the Tomb Kings army I have been collecting over the past several years. I had ordered the High Liche Priest, Prince Apophas, and the Necrotect. She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed was less than pleased, even with sacrificial gift cards to Target and a dinner at a nice restaurant. These things better be all that GW claim they are and more!

A few days later the mailman delivers a box from GW. After reading the horror stories and seeing the pictures of mis-casts, bubbles and broken bits with the new resin, I opened the box expecting the worst. Second mistake was purchasing these online and not inspecting the models before purchase. Despite my lack of forethought, I was pleasantly surprised. Which lasted until I began assembling the models. But I get ahead of myself.

Initial inspection of all three models showed no miscasts, minimal bubble holes and that only one was broken. The Necrotect's dagger had snapped off at the hilt. GW's claim that the detail is nice and crisp is not an exaggeration. These were in fact, "a finely detailed resin cast kit". I could call GW and request a replacement, but I figured a little dab of super glue would do. Boy, howdy, was I was right!

After cleaning off the flash, vents, scraping off the mold lines, and removing a small amount of mold material from the Priest, I began assembling the Priest and repairing the Necrotect. During assembly, I somehow managed to snap the Priest's leg at the ankle and the pointy bit off his halberd. I also managed to snap the Necrotect's whip hand off at the wrist while I was gluing his dagger back to his hand. Fortunately, this is where the superglue comes in. The finecast stuff takes to super glue like a duck to water. I put a drop on the breaks and held the pieces together for about 30 seconds (without gluing my fingers together or to the minis! Yea, me!). It was almost like the glue absorbed into the resin, leaving a very strong bond. A touch more work than plastic models, but overall not bad!

This is the part where it starts to go down hill. I washed the Priest in lukewarm soapy water to remove any mold release, and any oils from my hands. I used Krylon indoor/outdoor white primer spray to prime the Priest model. The model looked fine as I set it aside to dry. Several hours later I came back to the model to find it was fuzzy (for lack of a better term). First thing I did was go down the checklist for spraying models: I am in West Texas so humidity is minimal, the temperature was a comfy 78-ish degrees Farenheit, this was a new can that I have used on plastic and metal models with no ill effects, I shook the can for a good two minutes before spraying, began and ended the spray off the model, ensured the can was 6-8 inches away, and used only a light coat. I remembered Elric2k had a similar issue with one of his Finecast models so I contacted him to check his steps in prepping the model. His steps were almost identical to mine, and he had the same results I did. So WTF? It was time to get on the interweb.

I was able to find on other forums that users were having the same issue. Best explanation (at least it made sense to me) is that the resin used in Finecast continues to cure after the demolding process (time not determined, but apparently for a while if you factor in the time from demold to packaging, to sitting in a warehouse to shipping to customer). This causes the fuzzy issue with spray primer. The solution is to spray the resin with a lacquer based spray (dullcote was recommended). I put the priest into a simple green bath overnight and stripped off the fuzzy primer. I was concerned that simple green would adversely effect the Finecast resin, but it did the job just fine and no ill effect to the resin. (It did loosen up the PVA I used to hold the sand basing material, but I consider this an acceptable loss.)

I re-prepped the model with a warm soapy wash and after dry, I hit it with some dullcote. I let the dullcote dry for 24 hours and rebased the model with sand, then reprimed it with the Krylon indoor/outdoor primer. The dullcote seems to have fixed the issue and I now have a nice smooth white surface to begin painting on.

Overall, even though I suffered none of the horrors others have, I am a little disappointed in the Finecast. I am not sure why GW decided to use this material instead of releasing the models in plastic.